


To love is to be vulnerable

by Jollysailorswan



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: 19weeksofcs, Emma Swan in S1, Gen, Swan Believer, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-21 03:22:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11935275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jollysailorswan/pseuds/Jollysailorswan
Summary: This is how Emma Swan learned how to love again.(Just a tiny story I wrote ages ago for the 19weeksofcs challenge)





	To love is to be vulnerable

**To love is to be vulnerable – C.S. Lewis**

She’s learnt that the hard way. The truth behind those words have been imprinted in her mind and carved in her heart right as the last brick in her sky high wall was put in place. To love is to be vulnerable. To open yourself to vulnerability is to get hurt. Again and again and again. They stomp on your heart and on your feelings, taking everything and leaving nothing behind. Thieves that come with the best intentions and leave in the night without an explanation. And most of the time the only reason your mind can come up with is “You are not enough.”

Soon, though, she realized that she never really had a choice.

She gave him away because she had no life to offer him.

And then she spent years pretending he never existed for both of their sakes. She kept the part of her heart that belonged to the nameless boy under lock and key in hopes that the nights would be easier. She denied herself any kind of feeling so that the floodgates of her pain would stay closed, so that the despair and loneliness and guilt would not consume her.

She became someone she’d never wanted to be. A bitter, cynical person, pretending to not believe in the power of love.

All to protect the tattered remains of her broken heart.

But then the boy came to her. And the faceless, nameless ghost was suddenly Henry with the open smile and the heart full of dreams and hope. Her blood went cold and her body numb. Because the moment little Henry uttered the words “I’m your son” she knew them to be true. And above all else, she knew that she had been kidding herself for ten years.

She told herself she was staying for Henry’s sake. She needed to make sure that her choice to let him go hadn’t put him in a dangerous place. His life seemed good, considering. She knew he could have ended up in worse places than living in a mansion with a mayor as a mother. But it was that mayor that gave her pause. The possessiveness in Regina’s eyes, the madness that lurked behind her smiles, the threat in her words. They all screamed danger.

So she stayed. She took the bite when Regina said she wouldn’t make roots and decided that her meager belongings might feel more comfortable in Mary-Margaret’s spare room. And out of nowhere, she had more friends in this town that seemed out of place and out of time than she ever had back in Boston. And the boy made his presence a permanent resident of her heart.

To love is to be vulnerable. And when Henry fell down, an unassuming turnover in his hand and her mind already feeling paranoid to the point of wanting to take him as far away from Storybrooke as possible, she realized the truth.

She’d always loved him. It wasn’t a work in process. It wasn’t something new that wasn’t there before he showed up at her door on her birthday. It was the instinctual, unconditional love of a mother. Love that didn’t have to be earned. Love that held so much importance that even the idea of getting hurt seemed inconsequential the moment she stood above her boy who was fighting for his life.

She had been kidding herself for years. She loved him while in her prison cell, feeling his kicks and turns and wishing for him to stop because she didn’t want to shed any more tears, whether they be tears of happiness or sorrow. She loved him the moment she heard his first cry. She loved him during her nights of loneliness, sleeping in the backseat of the yellow bug or in a cramped apartment after odd hours of work. She loved him on days of supposed anniversaries and holidays and possible milestones. Taking his first step, speaking his first word, painting a picture of his home, going to his first school, making his first friends.

And she loved him when she finally met him. When she fought her own heart and when she fought a fire breathing dragon to save him. Her impossible little boy who defied everything and everyone to find her.

She loved him as she said goodbye.

And it was the happiest moment of her life when she found that it wasn’t forever.


End file.
